Wouldn't it be cool if there were an easier way for people to send tips about corruption, malfeasance and other bad stuff to investigative journalists? Like, through your iPhone?

No, there's not an app for that. But there might soon be.

The folks at Capitol News Connection want to create one, called AssignIt, and they've entered the Knight News Challenge to try to win the funding to build it.

Texas Watchdog is proud to be a small part of this venture. No, we can't take any credit for such a cool idea, but we're among the nonprofit investigative centers around the nation who would collaborate on it -- along with our friends at California Watch, Wisconsin Watch and Investigate West.

If you've never heard of the Knight News Challenge, you should. It's a huge national contest, underwritten by the Knight Foundation (the Knight family had once owned the Miami Herald, among other newspapers). The Knight News Challenge has helped launch many cool journalism and interactive projects, including EveryBlock and Spot.Us.

If you think the iPhone app idea is a good one, you can help us. The Knight News Challenge Web site lets readers look at all the grant applications, rate them and post reviews. AssignIt's entry is at this link (you'll have to do the free-registration thing to rate or review it). As of right now, AssignIt has a 4.4-out-of-5-star rating -- so get on over there and help us!

While you're there, check out some other of the very cool projects that are being pitched. Just a few of the many that I liked:

+ Expanding and localizing the WikiLeaks project;
+ NewsShift (subtitled "Watchdog journalism with a long tail")
+ Report for America
+ FOIA Friday, which would create a system of creating and tracking open government requests in the Ann Arbor, Mich., area.

You can also read about more interesting News Challenge applicants in some summaries posted on the Nieman Journalism Lab's blog.